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Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The 'Atlas Shrugged of historical revisionism'?

World War II revisionism is a fertile topic for folks of the antiwar persuasion (such as RAW) and I thought I would put in one more observation before Gore Vidal's death becomes yesterday's news.

Antiwar.com head honcho Justin Raimondo's obituary for Gore Vidal called my attention to Raimondo's earlier review of Vidal's The Golden Age, where Raimondo wrote, "Ironic, idealistic, world-weary and, in the end, optimistic, Gore Vidal has, in The Golden Age, cemented the capstone of his historical saga with what is truly a crowning achievement. A novel that works as history, that breaks fresh (if not entirely new) ground historically: here, at last, is the Atlas Shrugged of historical revisionism, a fictional but all-too-true retort to the court historians who peddle the Disney-ized mythology of the 'greatest generation' to a nation that has lost its memory, and, therefore, its conscience."

Raimondo's article also pointed out to me a book that I had not heard of before, Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States: 1939-44, by Thomas Mahl. Says Raimondo, "Mahl’s 1998 book is based on declassified documents that tell some of the story of how British intelligence agents permeated the political and social elites in Washington and New York, pushed a reluctant 'isolationist' America into war – and put us on the road to empire."

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